Typical of the news stories was one The Washington Post headlined: "GOP Struggles For Footing As Cultural Ground Shifts Leftward." Who was doing the shifting? Well, a couple of delusional Supreme Court justices supported by a homicidal maniac seated in someone's backyard flying the Confederate flag over his puny shoulder and a narcissistic self-promoter who recently changed his/her name to Caitlyn. Such are the dynamic forces driving history in America today -- at least in the eyes of the Hollywood-New York-Washington axis.
Actually, there is a more subtle, albeit more significant, transformation stealing across America, and it has been at work since 2010. It is the consequence of what our Founding Fathers embedded in our Constitution more than 200 years ago. It is federalism, working through the democratic process, and it cannot be stopped by a politicized court, a crazed gunman or a narcissist.
After the wave of elections of 2010 and 2014, 24 states opted for Republican government, lock, stock and barrel. In those states, the governorship and the legislatures are all Republican -- conservative Republican. As for the Democrats, they claimed only seven states lock, stock and barrel, and that is down from 13 states in 2014. As it stands now, the Republicans control 24 states lock, stock and barrel, in addition to numerous state legislatures and governorships. At the federal level, they hold both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Is there a trend here? I think there is.
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What is more, a dozen or so Republicans are vying for the 2016 presidential nomination. In the Democratic Party, one 67-year-old grandmother supposedly has the Democratic nomination sewn up, though her closest competitor, a 73-year-old socialist, is gaining on her. Will this Republican trend sweep a Republican into the White House? I think it will.
Let us return to what our mainstream news sources this weekend called a national leftward "shift." It was begun by an Olympian who won his gold medal almost 40 years ago. He calls himself a Republican and now claims to be a woman. This spells electoral trouble for the Republicans? And the "shift" continued with the aforementioned homicidal maniac killing nine African-Americans in South Carolina while they were at prayer. In so doing, he brought such discredit to the Confederate battle flag that Republicans, starting with South Carolina's governor, demanded the flag be retired. This spells more trouble for Republicans? I think not.
Finally, what about last week's Supreme Court decisions that the media adduced as part of the nation's seismic shift to the left? Two conservatives on the Supreme Court refused to return some shoddily written legislation to Capitol Hill for a rewrite in one decision. In the other decision, one conservative justice played sociologist and claimed to spot a trend that allowed him to lead the court in preempting the democratic process throughout the states. Frankly, two wobbly conservatives on the court do not make a national shift to the left, but let my liberal friends believe that it exists. Let them rave on about same-sex marriage, about the Confederate battle flag that almost no one wants hanging from a statehouse, and about Obamacare, which is increasingly unpopular and catastrophically expensive and will bankrupt America.
I return to the real electoral shifts that have been creeping across America. They stem from big government, which an increasing number of Americans believe mucks everything up. They involve personal freedom, which more and more Americans are fearful of losing. They conduce to government spending, which a growing majority of Americans throughout the states recognize as unsustainable. Throughout the country, at the state level, there is a growing awareness that the Hollywood-New York-Washington axis is washed up.
This next election, a presidential election, will turn on serious issues rather than sad issues: the reach of government, the cost of government, and foreign policy. On these matters, Democrats increasingly say all the wrong things.
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